The Dark Knight Rises Takes #1 with $248 Million Worldwide in First Week

In light of the movie theater shooting in Colorado on Friday morning, Warner Bros. didn’t release box office numbers for “The Dark Knight Rises” over the weekend, and well they shouldn’t have. No one needed to hear a movie studio crowing about how much money they made after 12 people were murdered senselessly a few days earlier. But box office is still a big part of what we do here, and we do have to cover it eventually. In a way, this is a positive, as it confirms that the world didn’t allow one man’s evil deeds to stop us in our tracks.

Having said that, “The Dark Knight Rises” earned $248 million worldwide in its first week, with over $160 million of that coming from the domestic box office. That was enough to give “Rises” third place all-time, behind just the last “Harry Potter” movie (at $169 million) and 2012’s current box office record holder, “The Avengers”, which opened earlier in the Summer with $207 million in its first week.

For comparison’s sake within the Batverse, “The Dark Knight Rises'” Stateside numbers just barely edged out its predecessor, 2008’s “The Dark Knight”, which opened four years ago with $158 million.

You have to wonder how much more “Rises” would have made if not for the vile evil of one man in Colorado. As impressive as the numbers turned out to be, it might have been much more, given just how highly anticipated the film was, if not for the still-lingering fear that resulted. But I guess that’s for historians to mull over in the years (or decades) to come.